The Search for God Page 2.1.3.2
We talked previously about how the pain of death was the prime factor that began my search for God, and I think such pain gives every human pause to consider whether there is any existence after death.
However all too often, just like Bruno, we don’t talk about death.
Unfortunately, from everything we experience, death is a 100% guarantee. Death is a universal human law like the laws of logic (identity, non-contradiction, excluded middle). In any rational universe, the laws of logic must exist; they are foundational.
However, the law of death like the law of causality arises from experience. Laws from experience are true to our senses, then we try to make rational sense of what we have witnessed and what we expect to happen in the future.
One can try to intervene in the laws of logic but you cannot without being irrational. The laws of experience are about trying to determine how our universe functions. For these laws, we often ask the questions such as:
- Why did X happen?
- Why did that car explode?
- Why did a hurricane form?
- Why did papaw die?
Death is an effect that has a cause.
Death, Identity, and Change
Just like change is a subset of identity and 100% applicable to this universe, death is an effect of causality and change, which, in turn, impacts human identity. We all possess characteristics and traits, but are there parts of yourself you don’t like?
Things you wish you could change? Maybe your weight, anger, depression, or hair color. However, death does not change. Each of us has a different response to unchangeable characteristics. We can bemoan the condition or accept it.
However, most people try to never think about death. Why think about something you cannot change? Have you ever watched the How I Met Your Mother episodes about “The Slap Bet”? In those episodes, Marshall gets to slap Barney three times, but there is no expiration date; Marshall can slap Barney anytime he wants.
So Marshall prolongs the anxiety by postponing the slaps for years, torturing Barney. Death is the slap waiting to happen. We often deal with the anticipation as Barney did, we try not to think about it. Others buy every supplement they can and ingest vitamins and herbs, all in an attempt to delay the inevitable.
Others push their bodies; others gorge on unhealthy foods, drink damaging liquids, and use tobacco or mind-altering substances damaging an already fragile body, growing fat, and enjoying the moment more than the future.
Whether we are careful or reckless, the law of death is the final physical change to our identity applicable to every single human.
Death, Identity, and Non-contradiction
The law of death recognizes a change from a living physical body into a non-living physical body. The question becomes, “Does a human have a non-physical component, like a soul?”
There are different options for the human non-physical identities of soul, mind, and spirit, which I explore in the article entitled “Human Identity.” In this section, I will assume human identity has a body and soul.
The reason for this assumption is to point out that a dead physical body can still have a living soul. A human cannot have a dead physical body and an alive physical body at the same moment in time, but we can have a dead physical body and a living soul at the same time, they are two different things.
Human identity, as we currently understand it, is a single entity, whether body or body and soul. What we don’t know is whether we have just a body or a body and soul. So the law of death is 100% certain for the physical human body, but an intangible soul could still live.
We must gather more knowledge, which we lack. Either we have a soul, or we don’t have a soul. Therefore, if we have a soul, even if we physically die, we could still live.
The Law of Death Problem
The effect of death is a perceived problem that impacts human joy, so we often ask why do humans have to die? Everything we see, and everything we know informs us that humans do and will die, but does this have to be the case?
Whether we wonder about resurrection, reincarnation, crossing the river Styx, or some nirvana to escape from our physical form, the idea of humans living forever permeates religions and cultures.
We want to know answers to questions such as the following:
- Can reality change?
- Can we bend reality?
When we looked at the law of mathematics, I cannot imagine a rational universe where 1 + 1 does not equal 2. Or a universe where an object, whether a person, a table, or a purple dragon unicorn, is anything other than what it is.
However, I can imagine a universe where humans never die. I can imagine everlasting life. Even though experience informs us that every human dies, hope, imagination, and desire want to alter that future. Still, we must live in reality. We must succumb and submit to what is.
Just like math or non-contradiction, we cannot escape the implications and reality of this truth. However, the law of death is different from identity or math. Most people have an emotional response to death; there is separation and loss.
A person moves from living to non-living. If I get a math problem wrong, maybe I bounce a check, maybe the mob comes after me, or I go to jail, but 95% of the time math and these other laws don’t result in anger or fear.
The law of death evokes anger and fear, sadness and tears. The law of death reminds us we are limited. We are time-bound. Even though the problem of death resides deep in our being, our desire is to live forever.
The Law of Death Solution
So we have three choices:
We accept the inevitable. Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. Enjoy our time in this world.
We can imagine. We develop theories of what may happen, or imagine happier times. We examine nature and see rebirth, a seed, and a butterfly, all displaying transformation, so maybe our inner spirit releases.
Through the millennia cultures have developed theory after theory of what might happen. My favorite is the movie Defending Your Life, or how about the second chance we get in The Good Place?
We can search. We explore communications from those individuals or beings that claim knowledge about death. We scrutinize the information trying to find out what might happen. Can a human know? We can search for a divine, eternal being. We can seek creatures or person who returns from the dead.
Human imagination is fertile ground. From the ancient Egyptians, Romans, and Chinese to modern-day movies, we develop and explore ideas about what the afterlife will be. How do we know which theory is true? We hope.
We pray, but to who? Does the cosmos have a soul cycle – a process built into the fabric of the universe to allow continued life? Kind of like the Krebs cycle or the water cycle? Just because we can imagine something does not make that imagination true.
We reviewed this idea previously. We have at our disposal:
- Senses
- Logic and reason
- Other beings
Our senses clearly do not allow us to comprehend death and the realm of death. Our logic and reason only allows us to understand something when the object that we experience is logical or reasonable. In these instances, humans are the ones going into that realm.
We open a door. We send a probe. Maybe someone who dies returns and provides us with information so we can research and study instances of near-death experiences. Maybe that person “left their body” and resided in that place for, say a minute, 5 minutes, or at most an hour?
Is that enough time? Are the stories consistent? Do they change from culture to culture? What information do these individuals bring back? We have had 5000 years of civilization. How helpful is our intelligence? Clearly, this is insufficient.
So we must seek a being, or beings, who can inform us about what will happen after physical death, then we apply logic and reason to the information we obtain.
Again, we return to the lack of knowledge humans possess. What type of being can answer this “problem.” Well, to have information about death, the being must have the ability to travel to that realm or have information about the realm of death and not just any information.
Humans have information about our physical world and universe but still lack complete knowledge. So once again, we’re searching for a being with complete knowledge about the realm of death. So the being would require all-knowledge.
Second, the being must be transcendent. This idea of transcendence is a difficult concept. The basic idea is the ability to move across planes and realms of a different substance. The idea of transcendence is someone who is able to reach the realm of death and return or some being who can see, abide by, or know the realm of death, who then can inform humans.
The search for a being
Since the realm of death seems to be a realm of intangible souls, obscured to our human investigation, what type of “body” would this being have? In addition, while some “god” or “angel” might be of the substance of a soul and able to travel to that realm, do such beings have all-knowledge?
How would we determine between two transcendent beings? This idea we will explore in the article entitled, “What does it mean to be transcendent?” What do I mean? A transcendent being is one who can either travel between the realms of death and human life or view that place like we view a tree.
So in this instance, instead of researching human communication regarding “near-death” experiences, we would seek communication from a transcendent being or beings.
So at this stage, before we even consider a search for God, we have a choice. Since I was looking for answers about death, I could just affirm there is no life after death, which at this stage seemed presumptuous, so I ruled that option out.
Clearly, my own imagination or the imagining of others, however reassuring, could be discarded, unless there was some claim to transcendent information either personal or from another being.
This brings us to transcendence. I could seek human instances and information regarding death, but with the possibility of another being who is transcendent lingering as a consideration, I choose to seek the transcendent being. Why?
A being who could exist or see both human life and human death realms should have more knowledge and information than any human. Maybe this being cannot die. Maybe this being has senses that see every wavelength known on the EM spectrum.
Do I seek information from another human being, a relatively blind person touching the same elephant as I am, arguing over whether “it’s a snake” or “a tree trunk”? Or do I seek knowledge from God or some being who sees and knows about the whole elephant plus the elephant graveyard?
What Next?
- What is the crucial concept?
- In my experience, death is 100% true for all humans and humans are unable to gather adequate information to know what happens after death.
- Why is that significant?
- We must seek a transcendent, all-knowing being who can inform us about the realm of death. We call this being – God.
- If you agree, the next steps.
- If you disagree, please consider reading.
References and Links
A 97-Year-Old Philosopher Faces His Own Death